Who Is Gabi Klaf?
I was raped. I’m sure of it, but not when. This life? Maybe, more likely not, but, some life, sometime, I was. I am sure of it. There are too many indicators that left me appalled by my own skin, inflicting abuse by picking scabs until I bled and couldn’t wear shorts my entire life, emotional eating episodes, unexplained repulsion and hiding my body under layers of cloth. Reasons, some I can personally recognize- he said this, she looked at me like that, and many more, I know my soul can spin many tales about. But regardless if yes or not, and when, it no longer bares the weight I carried with it all those years. It’s gone, gone, gone. [Deep breath of relief.]
This I only recently remembered, and looking at it, fascinates me like some eerily familiar case study of someone clearly separate from myself. I studied Humanology (formerly Neo-Psychology) for two years. The best way I can explain this eclectic science is a holistic type of meta-physical Buddhist-tinged self-healing regression therapy. It’s truly amazing, and has brought me and countless clients remarkable results.
So, I was sitting in a new classes, new semester, new students. In comes Irit, a bouncy adorably large woman with amazing energy. She’s married to Yossi, who volunteered at our kids’ school. Fast forward two months later…. She asks me how I’m doing with the body thing one day. “What body thing?” I’m clueless, and had totally forgotten how I initially knew her years before she was the volunteer-guy’s wife. A friend suggested Irit when I told her I wanted to spoil Kobi and I for a good massage. Having never gotten one, I was nervous and called to verify some details, all of which I had totally forgotten about until she spilled it out there in the tones usually reserved for light how’s-the-weather chit chat. “You acted like a rape victim. I was sure you had experienced some severe physical abuse.” she chirped. WTF?? I was floored and stared at her numb, having zero recall of this entire issue.
What I Wanted To Forget
How conveniently our minds and hearts push way down deep that which we don’t want to deal with, that which we cannot yet deal with. So, she delineates how I asked about who she was, about if she would see my body naked, about if someone might see me there, about if she would touch my buttocks, about if I felt uncomfortable if I could ask her to stop. Funny, I hadn’t remembered any of it, and not so funny, I ended up backing out of my massage and gave my appointment to a dear, close friend for her birthday present. Just like I missed several therapy sessions and eventually fired my therapist when he insisted that we talk about ‘The Issue’ I wasn’t ready to touch yet, I conveniently was unable to make that appointment and face what I wasn’t ready to.
Fast Forward to 2012
We had been in South East Asia then for about 7 months. A traveling friend Cindy took me out to a girls’ night. It was then that I was dance crazy, loving the motion and the feeling of being that sexy and light and alive on that stage. I begged her to go dancing at Temple Bar. No go. We had mohitos and she treated me to a massage in Siem Reap, Cambodia. At the ripe age of 38, yes, I had my very first massage, and totally I loved it!
Was it because I’ve lost 28 pounds and got tones and sculpted enough to turn a head or two, which had never happened previously in my life? Was it because I had been touched and freed sexually from things I never knew were so deeply untouchable in me? Was it because all those years of meditation and Buddhist psychology and healing just wore away what was no longer serving me?
What a joy it was to lie on that mattress in that sleazy moldy-dark, second story massage parlor in that soft candle-light and feel the young woman rub every inch of my body. What a joy to notice that my blanket had fallen off when she contorted my spine and that my breasts were revealed and I was almost totally comfortable with that. What a joy to see Cindy’s body and mine in that barely lit room and feel the romantic beauty of the hot oils and the darkness and the intimacy of someone’s touch on my muscles and know, know that everything is safe and alright. They girls were doing the same routine massage they’d done a thousand times, Cindy was having her normal massage treat, and I, I was following the electricity of warm fuzzies shooting up and down my body, barely containing myself from screaming aloud, jumping for joy, laughing so hard with pure ecstasy as what it felt like to be free and comfortable in your own body. The old me would have hyperventilated and had a full-fledged panic attack. But here I was, enjoying it. All. All. All.
Fast Forward Again
That was the one and only massage I had received in my entire life, until this month in which I got three! I know!
Today, I’m lying in the couples’ spa room in Casa Del Rio, Melaka, Malaysia for the third spa treatment in three weeks. I know! (Freak out- in the really good way!) And each time, I have loved it completely, freely, fully. No qualms. None. No questions. No fears. Each of the three were deep tissue soul therapy, further relieving layers of pain I am still unaware of. How I relished turning around, full-front bare and talking freely to my masseuse . How I wanted to cry out from pure joy as I sat up from the massage table and walked across that room with both masseuses seeing me in just that fluffy blue disposable underwear they gave me. And I’m talking to them, laughing, smiling, at ease, no, at full pride, I strut over to the restroom and beam at the mirror.
“You’ve done it Girl! You have. You are totally comfortable with your own beautiful body! You did it! You decided to become hot and you have!”
Not Just A Vanity Trip
And it’s not just a vanity trip, which it also is and I can happily accept that at 38 1/2, for once in my life, I do want to turn heads and feel that attractive, I do. I’ve also bought bras for the first time in my life that hold me up with cleavage. I always, always, always hid my body, even when I was skinny, and especially when I was fat. Some two years back, on our ranch home in Costa Rica, I went out one day without a bra, and was shaking from nervousness the entire time. Later that week, I went to exercise without one, and feel almost liberated. For the last year and a half, I’ve spent entire days walking among people, even taking photographs, bra-less, in my pj tank-top, feeling comfortable enough with who I am, with that which makes up my own body, to show my skin.
I’ve worn shorts. Unheard of practically my entire life. Not just shorts. Short shorts that a lovely pair of Israeli twenty-something year olds left on my door after they checked out of Garden Village Guesthouse. And they were hot little things, and I filled their shorts so nicely. And I’ve worn short, short dresses and have twirled in them on that Temple Bar dance floor, and noticed that others noticed too. And, ready for this one? A bikini- totally freaked me out, just the thought of it! (I’ve written tons about my entire process, starting this this video and all the way up to the Healthy Weight Loss tab)
Will I adore my stomach, now well toned and muscles, when my 40′s or 50′s or next year, it will flap again? Will I admire my body in the mirror when again my proportions shift and my breasts won’t seem large enough to make that great hour-glass shape for my thighs and butt will bulge too much? Is this love for my body conditional to people not believing that I am almost 40 and that I’ve birthed three children? Will I love me, truly and deeply, when I could no longer get his attention based on my looks again?
I Do Hope So, But I Don’t Know
I have loved this liberation of soul and body in feeling, for once in my life, not like that girl with that great personality, but that really attractive woman. This transformation has done my soul so very, very much good. Knowing that I lost those 28 pounds and toned my body, and could pick it back up when I started to gain again, and knowing that I can do it again and keep it, is amazing. I saw a video today of a 42 year physical trainer and marveled how her toned body looks like one of a very fit 25 year old. And then I remembered his mother, so gorgeous and sexual in her 50′s, and then I know, deep down, that this too will pass, and with time, I will need to enter deeper inside and do the more intense spiritual work that requires my ego to disappear. And I know that my attachment to my body, this body that I’ve turned around from flab and shame into tone and pride will need to be renunciation too. I know I need to one day release that attachment to fully integrate into the spiritual being that I am simply borrowing this outfit/body for another round of learning on Earth.
I know this is now, and I do hope that when later comes around that I can look, and beam, and do that little dance in the mirror that now says “I adore you you hot little thing!” and will be able to say, “I adore you you beautiful/spiritual/love-filled little thing!” and feel it with the same fervor. I appreciate not living my life as an excuse, why I feel uncomfortable with this person or that one, why I’m so fat and out of shape, why I didn’t have the courage to leave my really amazing life in Northern Israel and become nomadic. I don’t want to look at me and feel the excuse, that I’m not my fullest, best, highest potential me, and when my attachment to this body fades, I do hope I still love me with that same fervor. I tell my clients to all the time, but it’s infinitely harder do walk your own talk, isn’t it?
So, I’ve changed clothing in places where others could accidentally see me, I’ve had a few people see a few too much shoulder, I’ve done some travel-minded carefree fun, and think to myself, that all that is missing next in my growth would be some nude beach or nudist colony. I’ll put it on my bucket list and then really see how my in-laws and my parents freak out how I’m abusing my children and totally screwing up my life in a mid-life crisis that never ends. Should be fun. I’m excited.
Bow
So, thank you again for allowing me to share my deepest thoughts, as they whirl and twirl and reveal themselves to me in my writing. I usually know where these things will begin, today I shall write about massages, but rarely have any indication where they will end up. I’d love a footprint from you, even just a code word like ‘red flag’ or ‘fairy dust’ that tells me you read it. I don’t use statistics on this site, like I do on the nomadic family one. This is my soul stage, my online healing/inspirational forum so I don’t want to quantify it with any measurable numbers. I am learning, slowly, that so many of you are here, with me, reading silently, and I love that, and respect that. Should you want to let me know that you’ve been by, it will make me smile. Should you prefer to stay quiet, I am smiling now, with love, to you for being that which you are, as you are, and loving yourself enough to be totally alright with not doing what someone asks you, with saying ‘no, no thank you’ and having no qualms about it. I love you that way.
So,say hi or don’t, I’ve done my part in sharing, in putting out there my ever-growth hopefully as an inspiration for you who read and those who don’t, to know that you too are normal. The energy of love is out as soon as I wrote the first word, and eve more so, as soon as I click ‘publish’. It’s about to be a cosmic part of the Universe, so sing and be happy, as we are meant to. It’s all good, very, very good.
Good night.
Gabi
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